REAL TO REEL
"The whole world will weep with gratitude when the big day comes because Mr Happer has got his comet!" What Mr Happer really wants is to find a comet. If he does, he'll call it a Happer comet or Happer's Comet or…Comet Happer. Sadly, Happer never gets his comet but he does eventually get an …
The opening ceremony of Tokyo 2020 made a massive impact when seemingly out of nowhere a rogue planet appeared in the sky over the Olympic stadium. A shimmering ring gate made of hundreds of drones had morphed into a slowly rotating Earth, like something straight out of a sci-fi movie. In tribute to the drone-made …
Inspired by five words, or is it six, in the 1998 blockbuster Armageddon, a movie about an asteroid the size of Texas on course to impact Earth in eighteen days and the team of deep core drillers sent to break it up, I wondered whether there were any quantifiable clues to support the statement that …
Compiling a list of every asteroid and comet disaster movie ever made is no easy feat. First, you need to identify potential candidates. Then you have to watch them all, which can be somewhat harder than finding them. Much like asteroids and comets themselves, there's a whole spectrum of content in these dramas, from the …
Continue reading "Every Asteroid and Comet Disaster Movie Ever Made"
Apparently, if you smell a fresh meteorite it smells like sulphur, according to reports about the Tagish Lake meteorite and the aroma that filled the air during its fall in 2000. And the Aguas Zarcas meteorite that fell in Costa Rica in 2019 has been said to smell of compost, vanilla and Brussels sprouts, depending …
Graphics showing all of the asteroids and comets visited by spacecraft...
From active asteroids to dormant comets, rubble piles to remnant cores, main belt comets and manx comets to ambiguous interstellar objects, this article provides a brief overview of the smaller objects in our planetary zoo—the main differences and similarities between asteroids and comets. But if it's meteors you're looking for, read Meteoroids, Meteors and Meteorites. …
It's the end of the year and one particular tabloid newspaper is again warning us that it could soon be the end of the world — yes, asteroid 2019 AE3 is in our vicinity and the apocalypse is coming. In keeping with the tabloid drama, below is a link to a list of all the …
Continue reading "Earth-Threatening Asteroids and Comets in the Movies"
So there's another apocalyptic asteroid warning in the tabloid news headlines. The lead scaremongerer in the UK is the Daily Express, who started out playfully alerting us to asteroids that will skim by Earth in the coming days. It didn't take long for a war of the digital world to start warning of swarms of …
More than 100 years have passed since the first film was shown in movie theatres that depicted a rock from space wreaking havoc on Earth—although in that case it was a comet rather than an asteroid making an impact. That movie, a silent black and white film called The End of the World released in …
Continue reading "Making an Impact: Lights, Camera and Asteroid!"
Many people will remember the day in 2013 when one asteroid stole the limelight from another. On 15 February 2013, all eyes of astronomers were on the close approach of a 30 metre-sized Apollo asteroid 367943 Duende (then known as 2012 DA14). The asteroid was not expected to be visible to the naked eye. Nor …
Continue reading "Real and Simulated Asteroid and Comet Impacts"
It’s a truth universally acknowledged that a moviemaker with a large rock heading for Earth must ignore the laws of physics and make things behave the way moviegoers want, otherwise no-one will watch it. And so asteroids and comets are called meteors, and meteoroids and meteors are called meteorites, and meteorites are called...well…meteorites, actually. The …
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